


Nuclear Meltdown

by egregiousSynonyms



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Angst, Gen, Homophobia, Manpain, Texas, The Freudian Ship, and call it, can we please stop calling it Dersecest, davecentric, instead?, nuclear meltdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egregiousSynonyms/pseuds/egregiousSynonyms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where the kids grew up in the same small town in Texas. Dave has worked at the power plant since he finished high school. One day, the plant malfunctions, and the town begins to crumble.</p><p> </p><p>Third-person, though centered on Dave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly I just wanted to write a fic where the kids were normal people in a small town that was supported completely by the nuclear power plant. There aren't any mutants, just Dave feeling sorry for himself because growing up sucks.

The pub was quiet. It was 11 PM and none of the second-shift regulars had shown. Dave had been in the pub since his shift ended at 2. His company phone buzzed. He ignored it and fixed onto the TV. Instead of the typical ESPN, it showed a Dallas news station. It was odd to see his little town featured on the big news. A montage catalogued the most picturesque stock footage of Glen Rose: the grinning cast of The Promise from 1995, some motorcycles in front of the court house, an old dude smoking a corncob pipe on a rickety porch.

The section ended with a ten-second zoom shot of Dinosaur World. At 14, Dave had fallen off the 45-foot fiberglass T-Rex and shattered his ankle. He had been trying to impress Rose Lalonde, the only blonde in the whole school he could ever be bothered with. _Not the only blonde_ , he thought, _but the only one who wouldn’t cream their jeans at the thought of being gangbanged by the Cowboys, all of them, even the guy who snaps the ball back who everyone knows is the shittiest_. After a few pulls of Jim Beam from one of his older brother’s flasks, Dave had used a moldy wooden ladder to clamber onto one of the ‘Rex’s jutting hips. He had snuck them into the park using a gizmo that scrambled electric fences that his Bro just had laying around. By the time they had gotten to the dinosaur statues, Rose was getting that look on her face that girls get when you stop amusing them, like a dog looking at a chew toy that they could have sworn was squeaking at a more pleasing pitch a few minutes ago. _Do a flip_ , she had called. And even though her tone hadn’t been serious, and even though the dino had been slick with late-night drizzle, Dave had clambered onto the T-Rex’s head, turned around, bent his knees, and leapt into what was surely destined to be an awe-inducing, ninja-inspired double backflip. He had woken up in a hospital with six pins in his ankle and a duly impressed Rose. He knew it was best not to make a habit of remembering Rose. She lived way out on the East Coast with a woman she met in college and their two kids. Her wife posted pictures nearly every day of some angelic kid kicking a soccer ball or stirring cookie batter or some shit. The bartender turned up sound on the TV. Dave pushed Rose out of his mind and listened to the reporter say words like “meltdown,” “Three Mile Island,” and “unknown local consequences,” with that cheery accent-less way that all news anchors talk. It was so nonchalant that Dave half-expected the reporter to bring out the high school football coach for commentary. _Way I see it_ , Coach would say, smacking his lips, _our boys went into the game with a plan to run us some clean, efficient energy and the other boys brought them a goddamn Chernobyl_. 

The bartender was staring hard at Dave. They had known each other since they were young and saw each other nearly every day at the bar. Theirs was a friendship of unavoidable proximity. He clicked off the TV and turned on the fluorescent lights.

“I’m closing up.”

“It’s only half past 11.”

Dave hated the way these lights made his skin look sallow. The lights at the plant were the same. Some mornings when he first got in to work, the sight made him want to puke up his daily McMuffin. He would tear off his traffic cone orange gloves, throw them over the steam line, and hold down his breakfast with a fist. This was strictly against regulations and a fireable offense, but everyone knew that giving in to the urge to vomit was a darker thing, so it was ignored.

“Dave, you can’t stay here. Why aren’t you with the other guys? They probably need you down there.”

Dave shrugged, stood up on uneasy legs, and walked out of the bar.


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The John anecdote may seem a little funky, canon-characterization-wise. I struggled on whether or not to keep it. I have rationales that I could have included, but I wanted to keep things sparse.

Jake English’s funeral smelled like death. It was surpising, and Dave thought that fact ironic. He wanted to lean to his left and whisper as much in Jade Harley’s ear, but he thought better of it. She was crying. John’s death was the first official consequence of the meltdown. Newsmen said that a death brought the incident to a Level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The reporters called it the “Eye-Ness” like everything was so time-sensitive that they wouldn’t dare hazard the extra syllables. 

The summer before Dave’s junior year of high school, John Egbert had been killed in a car accident. The whole town showed up for the wake and the funeral. There was a massive offering of flowers and conciliatory bears piled at the crash site. Dave and John had been close as kids, but high school had drawn them apart. A week before the accident, John had called Dave crying. The conversation hadn’t made much sense, but Dave remembered John talking about a boy he loved who beat him up for it. Dave had called John a faggot and hung up the phone. The next spring, John got a full two-page spread in the yearbook. Dave had helped design it.

Dave scanned the crowd. Every face was familiar, and there were notable absences. It had been a week, and people were already leaving en masse. The plant workers had stuck around to help clean up the more hazardous chemicals. The radiation in the ocean was a foregone conclusion, but there were gallons of leaked coolant that needed to be shoveled out of the plant. The men that stayed worked as volunteers. Most didn’t know what else to do.

The funeral concluded with _The Old Rugged Cross_.


	3. III

Dave had not been back to the plant since his shift on the day of the accident. Nobody bothered him about it.

Everyone knew that Dave had turned down the chance to go to a California college on scholarship ten years back. He had stayed in town to wait for Rose. Since he was 16, Dave had planned to ask Rose to marry him on the night of her graduation. Jade Harley had told him that he was making a mistake. She was Rose’s best friend and she knew that Dave was fixing to get his heart broken and his future ruined. Dave hadn’t been able to hold out until graduation. He had dropped to one knee in the middle of Rose’s senior prom during the chorus of _Open Arms_. Rose had stared at him like she had suddenly realized that her boyfriend of three years was a leper and walked disgustedly out of the gym in five-inch purple-vinyl heals.

Dave drove to Fort Worth every day to look for a new job. He spent the first few hours of the morning putting in applications. The rest of his day he spent wandering around Trinity Park with his own flask of El Jimador. He liked to watch the birds.

One day, a young woman sat down on the bench next to Dave. She had pale skin, electric pink hair with platinum blonde roots, and several facial piercings. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.

“Can I have some of that?”

“Some of what?”

“You know what I mean. I see you here every day.”

Dave shrugged and handed her the half-empty flask. She took a mouthful and tried not to pull a face. Dave admired the effort. They passed the flask back and forth until it was empty in a queer silence of mutual misery.

“Hey. You want to come with me to this party a few blocks from here? Free booze.”

Dave couldn’t tell if she was serious. After a minute of silence, she stood up and brushed the dust from her pink-and-green-plaid jumper.

“You coming?”

The dusk light was perfect, but her hair didn’t catch sunlight like hair was supposed to; the cheap dye absorbed it like a void. She looked like an angel painted on a sheet of plywood. Dave stood up and followed her out of the park like a duckling.


End file.
